Talk:Operation Cyclone

Violation of NPOV in background

The first link cited in the "Background" section is to a Christopher Hitchens article titled: "The latest absurdities to emerge from Jimmy Carter's big, smug mouth." Hardly an NPOV, authoratative source. --82.32.130.14 (talk) 07:29, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

broken link

the link for the first footnote does not work

Repaired. --Fastboy (talk) 12:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Not enough about Charlie's contributions...

It looks like from this article that it was Carter and Brzezinski were responsible for the funding and getting the Israeli's involved. Whereas it was really Charlie Wilson who was mainly responsible for increasing the funding 100 fold by 1987 and for getting the Israelis, Egyptians, and Pakistanis to facilitate the arms sales/movement. Yeah, Carter and Brzezinski got the ball rolling in '79, but after that, they had really nothing to do with the escalating conflict. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.83.247.217 (talk) 03:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Some details with sources are given in the article Charles Wilson (Texas politician).--Fastboy (talk) 05:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Not enough (nothing) about Reagan's contributions...

There is absolutely no mention of Reagan in this article, which I find odd. He was President during a majority of Operation: Cyclone's duration, so he would have had to sign off on most of this. O:C is mentioned in the Reagan Doctrine wiki article; Reagan is mentioned in "blowback" and how his funding of Afghani fighters helped create the Taliban.

But no mention here.

Then again, there was no mention of Charlie Wilson in this article unil a week or so after the Tom Hanks movie came out. Maybe we just need a movie about (not starring) Reagan before this article will get up to speed. Ynot4tony2 (talk) 17:29, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

No source about the codename Cyclone

I'm troubled that there is virtually no source about the codename "Cyclone". I have read some documentation about the CIA covert program (such as Milt Bearden The Main enemy, Steve Coll Ghost Wars), I never came across this name. Are you sure it is not a big hoax ? Rob1bureau (talk) 23:53, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Need a Reference

This section at the end, under "Criticism":

"(It is estimated that 35,000 foreign Muslims from 43 Islamic countries participated in the war). Additionally, the close relationships and cooperation established during the 1980s between the mujahideen and Pakistan's intelligence and military services, as well as the presence of mujahideen training bases on Pakistani soil, ultimately led to the infiltration of the Pakistani security services by militant Islamic elements as well as the de facto takeover of northwest Pakistan by pro-Taliban rebels."

Where is/are the reference(s) for this? This very much needs to be accurately footnoted.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.219.187.126 (talk) 22:24, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

NPOV, References and Writing Styled for an Encyclopedia

"Moreover, U.S. support for the mujahideen enabled and prolonged their resistance to the Soviet presence, ultimately resulting in thousands of battle-hardened, radicalized, non-Afghan veterans returning to their home countries and forming the core of what is now referred to as Al Qaeda..." Who let prisonplanet forum commenter edit this? Rhetorical, as it comes with being a wiki. I am not saying that style and writing is to be completely dry and monolithic, but stuff like this is what the title of this discussion section decribes perfectly. Fixing it. 68.193.125.131 (talk) 18:03, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Agree. this article is a good example of when an attempt to "make a point" gets in the way of telling the story in a clear and concise manner. however it would take an enormous amount of work to de-tangle and fix it. Decora (talk) 19:44, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Interview by Le Nouvel Observateur

Based on information from here: The Brzezinski Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur (1998):

Original interview:

• "Les Révélations d'un Ancien Conseilleur de Carter: 'Oui, la CIA est Entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes...'". Le Nouvel Observateur (in French). Paris: 76. January 15–21, 1998.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)

Translation into English by William Blum and David N. Gibbs:

• Gibbs, David N (2000). "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect" (PDF). International Politics. 37 (2). Palgrave Macmillan: 233–245.

On-line version:

• Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, U.S. President Carter's National Security Adviser

Brzezinski discussing interview:

• Brzezinski and the Afghan War Pt2. The Real News. Jan 15, 2010.

-- Petri Krohn (talk) 03:44, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

@Timesarechanging:- Your use of the The Real News Brzezinski interview is problematic. In the interview, the Real news interviewer misquotes the original Brzezinski interview stating "there's a famous interview you gave to a French paper where you talked about the decision to advise Jimmy Carter to arm the jihadists in Afghanistan against the communist government of Afghanistan. And you're quoted as saying that this would help induce or would lead to the Soviets intervening in Afghanistan, which might lead to their Vietnam." - Which is not an accurate reflection of the what Brzezinski says in the original interview. He responds by saying (rightly) that the quote put to him is not accurate: "there are two different aspects here that are kind of connected..."

The Real news interviewer is conflating several issues. Firstly Carter's decision in July 1979 was officially not to arm the mujahadin, it was to support them financially. Second, If you look at the original interview the comment about inducing a Soviet intervention is made in relation to Carter's July 1979 decision to support the Mujahedin, the "Soviet Vietnam" remark is made in relation to the December 1979 invasion. Brzezinski is quite right that the Real news interviewer has not quoted the original interview correctly, but you are using it in the article to claim that the original interview itself is not accurate (the admission of the misquote by the real news interviewer is discussed in the postscript of the the interview: "We took up Dr. Brzezinski’s challenge and first went to back to his interview with the French paper “Le Nouvel Observateur”, and sure enough, Dr. Brzezinski is correct, he didn’t make his Vietnam comment until after the Soviets invaded: The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.”"

I have to say your approach here seems odd. first you delete a high quality academic secondary source with the claim that it is "primary". Then, when the source is restored you add a primary source, using an interpretation of that primary source not supported by the source itself. I'm going to remove the source and material because firstly it is a primary source (history articles should be based on academic secondary literature) and secondly your interpretation of the source is not supported by the source itself Dlv999 (talk) 06:49, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Your focus on this alleged quote from a minor official is wildly undue, completely misleading, and shockingly ahistorical. First of all, nobody who has ever spoken with Carter administration officials gives this ludicrous Machiavellian conspiracy theory the slightest consideration. Moreover, Brzezinski's actual memos to the President at the time--which are declassified and publicly available--do not celebrate the Soviet intervention as a stroke of good fortune, but rather convey a sense of general alarm and panic at the thought of further Soviet incursions throughout the region. The claim that Brzezinski sought to "induce" a Soviet intervention is the product of sheer fantasy, a grotesque ideological invention Brzezinski explicitly disavows at the start of the Real News interview. And Brzezinski has repudiated the fake quote numerous times. See, for example, The Strategic Mind of Zbigniew Brzezinski: "For the record, Brzezinski later denied that he ever claimed that he had sent a note to Carter on July 3, 1979 stating that the aid would induce an intervention and has vehemently maintained that the French reporter did not accurately record that specific statement...In total, the presidential finding authorized only a little more than a half-million dollars to conduct these operations—-a paltry amount of money and assistance to charge that the administration intentionally attempted to "suck the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire." Nor is there any record to be found substantiating Le Nouvel Observateur's claim that Brzezinski had sent a note to the president on July 3 stating that the "aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention"....As Robert Gates would later recall, "No one in the Carter Administration wanted the Soviets to invade Afghanistan and no one, as I can recall atleast, ever advocated attempting to induce them to invade....Only after the Soviet invasion did some advocate making the Soviets 'bleed' in their own Vietnam."....Throughout 1979 it is clear that Zbigniew Brzezinski did not attempt to induce a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In fact, at every conceivable turn he pressed Carter to be more forceful and assertive with Moscow to prevent an invasion, but his concerns obviously went unheeded....When Gates was later asked if he had any idea that disclosing this information in From the Shadows would create doubts as to the administration's true objectives, he responded: "No, because there was no basis in fact for an allegation the administration tried to draw the Soviets into Afghanistan militarily."....In reality, if the French reporter did not commit a journalistic error or plan a media ambush, most likely Brzezinski was practicing some type of audience-based ambiguity. Here, he could have made the decision to tell this one reporter that the administration set an "Afghan trap" for the Kremlin, with hopes that the story would serve to bolster his own role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The theory in this case, though, would have one believe that Brzezinski intentionally clouded the historical truth—-for one interview-—to reap the rewards, yet planned to later deny the whole story to insulate his reputation from the dark aspects associated with the millions of casualties that were incurred by the Afghani people. To be sure, this is highly unlikely....The Brzezinski memos to the president were almost certainly written in good faith and prove that Brzezinski did not want the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, although he was fairly certain that Moscow had made the decision to do so anyway." U.S. officials like Zbigniew Brzezinski, Walt Slocombe, David Aaron, Robert Gates, Leslie Gelb, Bob Shrum, Dennis Ross, Jim Mowrer, and Hedrick Smith have all dismissed the conspiracy myth, as have experts like Sir Lawrence Freedman, Steve Coll, and David Gibbs. It's simply not encyclopedic to allow one misquotation in a foreign paper to dominate the entire historiography of the war.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:36, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I am simply accurately reporting what academic historians have published under established academic imprint on the topic of the article - that is standard practice for writing historical articles in Wikipedia. If you have sources of similar quality (academic historians published under academic imprint or in peer reviewed journals) that say something different then we should certainly add that as well. What you have produced so far does not merit inclusion. The Real News interview is a primary source and the interpretation you have made in the article is highly problematic as explained above. Brzezinski does not disavow the Le Nouvel Observateur quote, he disavows what the real news interviewer puts to him, which is a misquote of the Le Nouvel Observateur interview on two accounts: First the interviewer talks about arming the Muhjahadin in July 1979 (which does appear in the LNO interview) second he talks about the "Soviet Vietnam" comment in July 1979 (which is a misquote of the LNO interviewer). The Real News acknowledge the error in the post script of the article: "We took up Dr. Brzezinski’s challenge and first went to back to his interview with the French paper “Le Nouvel Observateur”, and sure enough, Dr. Brzezinski is correct, he didn’t make his Vietnam comment until after the Soviets invaded: The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War.”" Brzezinski disavows what is said to him by the Real News interviewer, you are using it to claim that he disavows the original LNO interview - this is original research based on a primary source.

Master's thesis are not regarded as RS in Wikipedia so the only other source you have provided is not fit for inclusion. As for the list of names you say support your position you need to provide proper citations (date, publisher, page number) if you want them to be considered in this discussion. Dlv999 (talk) 06:36, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

At the start of the interview, Brzezinski is asked if he sought to "induce" the Soviets to intervene. He replied "No, that's not an accurate quote. I don't know what yours is based on." When asked about the LNO interview specifically, he stated: "As far as the French interview is concerned, it was not an interview but excerpts from an interview that was originally supposed to be published in full but which they never checked with me for approval in the form that it did appear." There's no OR involved. It's not a surprise that the translation process, coupled with the language barrier, produced this misquotation. Brzezinski never said anything even remotely comparable in any other interview, in his personal diary, or in his memos to the President. "Moreover, NIO Horelick, in his memo to DCI Tuner on April 5, had warned that there was a "risk that a substantial U.S. covert aid program could raise the stakes and induce the Soviets to intervene more directly and vigorously than otherwise intended," and the administration followed his advice, approving on July 3 what can be characterized as the smallest acceptable package—-void of any lethal provisions." The thesis is useful because the author spoke with those officials. Finally, TRN interview should be used because no secondary source should ascribe false claims to a primary source.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 15:15, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

John Bernell White, Jr. interviewed Slocombe for his thesis. Here is what Slocombe said about the "Soviet Vietnam" quote: "Well, the whole idea was that if the Soviets decided to strike at this tar baby (Afghanistan) we had every interest in making sure that they got stuck. It would be costly to them. The Soviets would get a little sense of what it was like to be propping up an unpopular regime in the face of local opposition. Yes, it would be costly to them. It might discourage them from getting into anything in the future."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 15:22, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

• Look at WP:RS: "Masters dissertations and theses are only considered reliable if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence." There is no evidence of this being cited by any other scholars. It is not RS and needs to be removed.
• Your interpretation of the Real News interview is highly problematic. Brzezinski is correct that what is put to him by the Real News interviewer is not an accurate quote of the Le Nouvel Observateur interview. But you are interpreting this as meaning the original Le Nouvel Observateur is not an accurate quote. It's WP:OR based on a primary source and it needs to go. Dlv999 (talk) 17:01, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm open to expanding on the different motivations for arming the Mujahadeen. I am open to explaining the different interpretations historians have made of the Brzezinski interview. But please stop trying to introduce material from the master thesis (which is not RS) or the primary source interview (which is not RS for historical articles and involves a tenuous interpretations). Please find serious historical scholarship on the topic and cite that. Cheers, Dlv999 (talk) 22:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

As an attempt to try to come to some consensus, I suggest breaking the Brzezinski quote out of the background section, into a newly created section covering the motivation for support of the Mujahadin. There has been a lot published by both notable participants and by historians on the decision process and reasons behind it, so I think it would warrant a small section covering all significant views. My main concern is that we maintain sourcing standards for historical articles (see WP:HISTRS). Dlv999 (talk) 09:45, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Here Brzezinski unambiguously states "I didn't say it was designed to prompt a Soviet invasion. That was a very sensationalized and abbreviated version of an interview."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:56, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

link doesn't work

The link for citation 41 doesn't work anymore. I don't think the page exists anymore because I couldn't even get to usinfo.state.gov (the link goes to an archived article there). --100.0.38.136 (talk) 03:31, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

False flag operations

TheTimesAreAChanging it was a False flag operations, why did you reverted the edit?--Setareh1990 (talk) 07:05, 6 July 2015 (UTC)